Voluntary Restraint

The main online lottery site in the UK has two customer-caring features:

Self imposed limits on play

You may wish to manage your own play habits by imposing a limit so that your playing does not exceed a certain level ... If you subsequently choose to increase your play limits, the change will not be effective until the following operational day on the system. There is, in any event, a standard maximum number ...   If you wish, you can also use the facility to limit the amount of time spent as a daily or a weekly amount.

Game exclusion

Similar to imposing limits on your play, you can also choose to exclude yourself from playing a particular type of Game, if you feel this is necessary. If you choose to do this then you will be unable to try that particular Interactive  Game. You can choose to exclude yourself from all Interactive Games. If you do this you will be unable to try any Interactive Games.

If you remove your exclusion from a particular game the change will not be effective until the following operational day.

You can also exclude yourself from playing ALL games. If you choose this option you will not be able to play any games for a minimum period of 6 months and will then need to call the Control Centre to have this restriction removed.

You can permanently exclude yourself from playing ALL games by calling the Control Centre. Once this takes effect, you will not be able to play any games online again.

Would controls similar to these be valuable in chess.com?

ha! that is very funny :)

 There doesn't seem to be an "I wasn't joking" icon.

Unfortunately, any suggestion that I (or anyone else) make will always mean extra work for Erik and his team - if taken up. What would be the most effective way, I wonder, to monitor or meter the amount of time spent in chess.com?

Time / move is one such measure - that applies to playing.

What about time spent in the Forums, Tactics Trainer, etc.

The reason I enquire is to preempt potential addiction problems.

sorry - i thought you were kidding!

i'm not going to build those tools :)

maybe this => http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=monitor+internet+usage ?

There are limits on online lottery play in the UK? Heck, I win the UK lottery once a week without even entering! At least, according to what I get in my e-mail...

I suppose we could all apply some 'voluntary restraint' voluntarily in posting to the forums? Or could we?

Settings already there:

My Home => Account => Online Chess Settings => Max.# of Games

Erik will want the addiction problems - the more people hooked, the richer

Nothing like replying to a thread that's been dead for 18 months to point out that the feature requested is "already" there.

That setting applies to Greeter games only.